THE ESCAPE INTO ROOM

Or the reason I’m not getting a new driveway. There’s a number of titles here. Getting into my garage from the outside is very much like an escape room situation. It’s probably why I avoid invitations to go to an actual escape room. My whole day is solving puzzles. My life is an escape room. First, I have to unlock two different locks on the front door. Once inside, the next thing to do is turn the alarm system off. If I delay on this or just tune out the beeping, the alarm company calls me. I’ve done it twice. Once the alarm is off, I have to unlock the two locks on the door from the kitchen into the garage. Then I slide my homemade bar lock aside and lift the garage door. I do all of this so that my scooter can be safely stored inside the garage and if I’m lucky, Michael gets home before me and has the door open when I get home.

I was not lucky on Monday.

Except this time, when I lifted up on the garage door handle, nothing happened. The door refused to move. I stood for a moment in my sweltering garage, studying the contraptions that aids in lifting a garage door. I couldn’t see anything missing or wrong, so I attempted to lift the door with more force this time. Nothing. I went inside and got Michael. He replaced one of the springy pulley things years ago. He still remembers it as his worst case of handyman’s Tourettes ever. He inspected all the things involved with lifting the garage door and noticed that one wheel of one of the pulley thingies (the newer one) refused to move. It did not take him long to declare that this was beyond his expertise. Which is fine. I’d rather he throw in the towel before seriously injuring himself. Also it was probably 110 degrees in the garage. The problem was that my scooter was still on the wrong side of that garage door.

We managed to wrestled my scooter in through the backdoor, finally using the ramp we bought eight years ago. It wasn’t easy and I nearly amputated one of Michael’s arms by smashing it between my scooter and the door jam, but we did it. My scooter is now safe inside the garage. And stuck there. While I made dinner, Michael got on the phone with a company and the end result is that we will be replacing the garage door with a brand new one. Really, this is the smartest option. I’ve lived in this house for thirteen years. The garage door was janky as F when Chris and I moved into the house. It is honestly a testament to my stubbornness that it has survived so long. The new door will not be janky at all. It will have a real locking system and an automatic door opener.

I should be over the moon about all of it.

It will be at least three weeks before anyone can come out for the installation of the new garage door. My scooter is now safe, but also trapped in the garage. And this is honestly not how I wanted to be spending money this year. It feels like we’re starting to hemorrhage and barely have everything under control. I was hoping to be in a tightening the budget mode by the end of this month so we could start socking money away for a new driveway. I totally heard sad trombones while typing that last sentence. Why would anyone want to sock money away for a new driveway?!?! One might sock away money for a new car or a vacation to Italy. Not for a concrete road that leads from the garage to the actual road. It is a sad, boring and very expensive purchase.

Home ownership is an albatross.

The list of wants that I have for my house just keeps growing, like an upgraded electrical system so we can install solar panels and a charging station for the EV will we own one day. I’d really like to gut my kitchen, add some outlets (I have two and if they are all in use at the same time, the circuit blows), and make it a more efficient tiny house space. While we’re at it, it would be nice to turn the current pantry into a staircase to the basement, maybe replace the giant dining room window with French doors that lead out to a back patio and possibly add a porch to the front of the house with an easier entrance. Once that’s all done, we could see about really getting the basement leak proof and converted it into a proper living space. And then….

The list is never ending.

And I guess…the garage door is also on that list. In three weeks, I can take it off the list of wants for the house and I will no longer have to escape room my way into my garage.